“Like a rock and roll concert!”: The movie that changed everything for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
Denis Villeneuve shared how he and his childhood best friend Nicolas Kadima were so obsessed with adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune that they storyboarded a movie in their younger years. However, seeing as the latter didn’t follow Villeneuve to big-screen greatness, they missed out on the opportunity to become known as the French-Canadian version of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
A platonic bromance for the ages, the two Bostonians first met in the early 1980s when they were ten and eight, respectively. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that’s lasted over 40 years and seen them reach the top of the Hollywood ladder, something they arguably wouldn’t have managed individually had they not decided to chase their dreams collectively.
Whether it was living together, auditioning together, or creating a joint bank account so that there was always disposable income available, their symbiotic partnership paid huge dividends. It all reached its apotheosis when their co-written screenplay for Good Will Hunting saw them share an Academy Award win, elevating them to a new level of visibility and stardom they’ve each managed to maintain ever since.
That kind of all-in mentality was the foundation of everything they went on to achieve. There was no safety net, no fallback plan waiting in the wings if things didn’t pan out. It was a case of committing fully to the idea that they could make something of themselves in an industry that rarely gives anyone a second glance.
And when you’re operating like that, every moment of inspiration hits a little harder. The films they watched, the performances they admired, and the experiences they shared all became part of the same journey, feeding into a mindset that treated cinema less like a distant dream and more like something they could eventually shape for themselves.
Wherever one goes, the other tends to follow not too far behind, and that unsurprisingly applies to one of the greatest theatrical experiences Damon ever had. Never one to enjoy a core memory without Affleck being present, the star shared how the two of them caught an influential classic on its very first day of release. It continues to linger in the memory as an all-time highlight of the pair’s cinemagoing existence.
The duo would have been in their early 20s when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction arrived to change the face of independent cinema. Like many others, they were left enthralled by the filmmaker’s twisting, turning, blackly hilarious, riveting, and altogether incredible crime story. In fact, Damon would even compare it to attending a rock concert, which makes it sound as though there was a raucous crowd in attendance.
“I was at Mann’s Chinese Theatre opening night of Pulp Fiction in 1994 on the Friday night,” he told Letterboxd. “Ben and I were there together. It was like being at a rock and roll concert, you know what I mean? Like, that got us so fired up about what movies can do. That was definitely a highlight in my moviegoing life.”
At the time, Damon was a virtual unknown, even if he’d made appearances in well-known films, including Mystic Pizza, Field of Dreams, and School Daze. Affleck, meanwhile, had recently been overdubbed in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and popped up in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. Still, they’ve long since been in a position where they’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest directors in the industry.
Individually and collectively, they’ve collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, John Woo, Michael Bay, and many more. Still, the opportunity to work on a Tarantino movie continues to elude them both. As actors and filmmakers, their status has put them firmly in charge of their own destinies. However, the chance to partner with the writer and director responsible for one of their greatest shared cinematic memories has yet to materialise.
With Tarantino planning to bow out following his upcoming tenth feature, The Movie Critic, it doesn’t look as if it’ll ever come to pass. Still, at least they can always gaze back through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and recall the unmatched atmosphere of sitting down in a packed multiplex on the opening night of Pulp Fiction for 154 minutes of transformative cinematic excellence that neither of them will ever forget, given how indelibly it remains burned into Damon’s mind.
